redistricting

The Arizona Democratic Party today filed an extensive records request with Attorney General Tom Horne’s office, hoping to find evidence that his investigation into possible open meeting law violations by the state’s redistricting commission is part of a coordinated Republican effort to besmirch the group and its work.

A slate of prominent Arizona Republicans including Gov. Jan Brewer, U.S. Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain, nearly the entire GOP congressional delegation and state House Speaker Andy Tobin took aim at the state’s redistricting commission today, blasting the panel for a congressional map that they say is gerrymandered to give an edge to Democrats.

A judge has scheduled a Friday hearing to allow new witnesses to testify in a lawsuit that seeks to disqualify the candidacy of a Mesa woman whose critics say is in the race to help Senate President Russell Pearce keep his seat.
Election Attorney Thomas Ryan, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a Pearce critic, plans to call more witnesses during a 3:30 p.m. evidentiary hearing.

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission today approved a congressional draft map that includes a competitive district in the middle of the Phoenix area, voting 3-1 over objections from the two Republican members.
Independent Chairwoman Colleen Mathis and Democratic Commissioners Jose Herrera and Linda McNulty voted for the map, while Republican Commissioner Richard Stertz voted against it.

The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission will spend the weekend studying proposed changes to its congressional map to see if it can retain a competitive district in the Phoenix area without carving Mesa into three separate districts.

The state redistricting commission today filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Attorney General Tom Horne’s investigation into whether the commission violated open meetings laws during the hiring of its mapping firm in June.

The chairwoman of the Independent Redistricting Commission wants the panel to take a fill-in-the-blanks approach to re-mapping the state's political districts, asking her fellow commissioners to tentatively adopt a map that leaves blank nearly the entire Phoenix metro area, which would include four of the state’s nine congressional districts.